Mac's market share growth is 'nothing short of spectacular'

Apple has been on a tear of late, but it's not just a story of iPods.

Web analyst Net Applications now puts the Mac's market share at 8 percent, up from 5.3 percent in early 2007. That is stunning growth by any measure, especially when you consider that this is 18 percent growth in its market share...just since November 2007.

Clearly, there was much Christmas joy for the Mac maker this holiday season.

Vista? It's still languishing, though Windows XP is king of operating systems, with 76 percent of the market. Not too shabby, but not what Microsoft would wish for, either. In fact, Microsoft got coal all year, as its crushing market share continued to crush...but a little less forcibly every day, as the data shows:

(Credit: Net Applications)

And look at those iPhone numbers. It's shocking, really. Apple is redefining the Web experience...right under our noses. The question may well be, however, whether at some point Apple becomes so vanilla that it's not cool anymore. Will the faithful still show up?

I will, as I love the elegance and ease of use that my Mac affords me. But I still wonder if the allure of a Mac will fade when its market share is at 20 percent.

[ppgreat]

The interesting thing to track is whether these OS figures are a result of dissatisfaction with Vista, the iPod/iPhone halo effect, or a combination thereof. Just last night I was speaking with our priest at church who had purchased a new PC with Vista, and was asking me if there was a way to get back to XP. (That makes 3 people I personally know who got PCs over the holidays with Vista and are not happy. One is actually returning his machine to Dell and is going to buy an iMac.)

[djames42]

One possibility (which was suggested over at the appleinsider forums) is that, as Mac penetration is higher in the home than in the office, and with a lot of people spending more time at home than in the office over the holidays, the numbers could be skewed a bit just because of the sheer percentage of people surfing from their homes vs. the office during the month of December.

It will be interesting to see if the climb is just as exponential into the month of January. I, for one, hope so! Wouldn't the world be a better place without a Microsoft around to take everyone else's ideas and bollocks them up? ;-)

[john55440]

Market share figures from other sources aren't so rosey. According to both Gartner and IDC, the Mac's worldwide market share is in the Others category, behind at least five other companies.

As for "stunning growth", HP has a (IDC) 19.6% worldwide market share, with 33.0% growth.

[ppgreat]

"Market share figures from other sources aren't so rosey. According to both Gartner and IDC, the Mac's worldwide market share is in the Others category, behind at least five other companies.

As for "stunning growth", HP has a (IDC) 19.6% worldwide market share, with 33.0% growth."


That's great for HP, but these figures cited in the article are for OS growth, not hardware. HP is blowing away Dell, Gateway, Acer, et. al.

[William Crow]

I converted from Wintel to Apple, with iMac about 1 year ago. Its been a dream compared to the trouble of the multitude of problems I had with Windows. I wasted substantial man hours keeping the machine running - reloading Windows 2-3 times a year to keep speed up, dealing with virus software, and, probably more than anything, just reading about ways to keep it running. I save hundreds of hours a year not having to deal with this.
Now, if Apple will dump the international buffoon Al Gore from its board, I'll be ecstatic.

So, a blog named The Open Road is celebrating Mac OS' victory over Windows? That doesn't make much sense to me, as Mac and its little brother, iPhone, is in no way to be related to "OPEN". Hmm...

[Alpachino321]

No fakes pills